Isolation and characterization of human embryonic stem cell-derived heart field-specific cardiomyocytes unravels new insights into their transcriptional and electrophysiological profiles
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: AIMS: We prospectively isolate and characterize first and second heart field- and nodal-like cardiomyocytes using a double reporter line from human embryonic stem cells. Our double reporter line utilizes two important transcription factors in cardiac development, TBX5 and NKX2-5. TBX5 expression marks first heart field progenitors and cardiomyocytes while NKX2-5 is expressed in nearly all myocytes of the developing heart (excluding nodal cells). We address the shortcomings of prior work in the generation of heart field-specific cardiomyocytes from induced pluripotent stem cells and provide a comprehensive early developmental transcriptomic as well as electrophysiological analyses of these three populations. METHODS AND RESULTS: Transcriptional, immunocytochemical, and functional studies support the cellular identities of isolated populations based on the expression pattern of NKX2-5 and TBX5. Importantly, bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing analyses provide evidence of unique molecular signatures of isolated first and second heart field cardiomyocytes, as well as nodal-like cells. Extensive electrophysiological analyses reveal dominant atrial action potential phenotypes in first and second heart fields in alignment with our findings in single-cell RNA sequencing. Lastly, we identify two novel surface markers, POPDC2 and CORIN, that enable purification of cardiomyocytes and first heart field cardiomyocytes, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: We describe a high-yield approach for isolation and characterization of human embryonic stem cell-derived heart field-specific and nodal-like cardiomyocytes. Obtaining enriched populations of these different cardiomyocyte subtypes increases the resolution of gene expression profiling during early cardiogenesis, arrhythmia modelling, and drug screening. This paves the way for the development of effective stem cell therapy to treat diseases that affect specific regions of the heart- or chamber-specific congenital heart defects.
Source: Cardiovascular Research
DOI: 10.1093/cvr/cvab102
Authors: Arash Pezhouman, James L Engel, Ngoc B Nguyen, Rhys J P Skelton, William Blake Gilmore, Rong Qiao, Debashis Sahoo, Peng Zhao, David A Elliott, Reza Ardehali
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funders: U.S. Department of Defense, Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Monash University, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
Awards: Application of Boolean Networks to discover stem and progenitor cells, Protective Effects of Neonatal Plasma in Ischemic Heart Disease, Macrophage Polarization in Response to Infections and Inflammation, Preclinical evaluation of human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiovascular progenitors in a large animal model, Generation of mature human embryonic stem cell-derived left ventricular cardiomyocytes for transplantation in a large animal model, Annotation of cell types in human colon tissue using Boolean analysis, Precision therapeutics of inflammatory bowel disease guided by Boolean logic
OpenAlex ID: W3136578409